Mind Sports South Africa's (MSSA) blog on competitive gaming in South Africa from proto-computer gaming all the way through to the most modern. For more about MSSA go to: https://www.facebook.com/mindsportssa/

Monday, 16 February 2015

SA clans fail the SA professional eSports gamer

In South Africa, at the moment,
practically every gamer who plays eSports claims to be a professional
gamer.

What we already know is that South Africa has few, if
any professional gamers,

But why?

Gamers immediately
blame competition organizers for not providing enough prize monies.
However, it is not prize-money that makes a professional gamer.

What
does make a professional gamer is nothing more, or less, than a
salary.

Looking at the clans in South Africa there does not
seem to be a single clan that has made any real effort to become a
viable business that employs their gamers as employees in order to
play for them.

Sure there are the clans (or MMO's)
that accept all sorts of freebies to make their members feel like
they are getting something worthwhile.

But are they getting anything
worthwhile?

In my opinion they are not!

It is all just
'smoke and mirrors'.

The freebies, hardware and other gifts
do not put food on the table.

Nor do the gamers get the same benefits
as other employees do under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.

Without healthcare, fixed vacations,
and a salary that at least meets the minimum wage criteria, gamers
are not, nor will they ever be, professional gamers.

Gamers
must therefore stop deluding themselves to be professional gamers
when the clans that they play for fall so far short themselves.

When
the gamers stop deluding themselves, the gamers will be able on
putting pressure on their clans to 'pull finger' and start
delivering.

Until then, gaming in South Africa will only be of
an amateur status, and those that enter the DGL for their prizes and
prize-money will continue to be part of a great delusion wherein clan
owners do nothing for their gamers from a professional point of view.